Were you, or someone you know, living in London during WWII?

My maternal grandmother was a teacher - she was responsible for evacuating children from London; & spent a lot of time removing children from unsuitable placements. She also volunteered to work in the munitions factory a local biscuit factory was repurposed into - WRENS felt she was NQOSD, as a grammar school girl (a CATHOLIC one, at that, the horror...) from Plumstead who’d “only” been to teacher training college She was one of the many Londoners to have a beloved pet put down at the start of the war, which a couple of years ago was presented as some kind of secret & also evidence of Heartless Evil British Actually Hate Animals. Massively lacking the context of London already being a multicultural city of migrants & the fact these people who’d seen what poison gas does to people absolutely believed it was about to be used on them & they’d no way to protect their pets from what would almost certainly be worse weapons than the ones from the last war. Feck-all point saying “oh, but the Nazis didn’t use gas!” - it wasn’t a decision where people felt they could Wait & See. There probably were some people for whom it was a relatively easy decision, Because Humans. There were a lot who kept it together publicly, Because Social Norms. But a lot of people, including my granny, never owned a pet [of that type] again. She only ended up with a cat after my uncle, when at university, rescued a kitten from an oil drum where the rest of the litter & their mother had been drowned, and wished the tiny bundle onto her.

My paternal grandmother worked for the Post Office in central London. To be honest none of my grandparents really talked about the war (lots of what I know about my other granny comes from aunt) but I know she was on a bus when St Paul’s was being bombed & the driver basically just went careering off trying to keep ahead of the raid; and she and the 3 of her sisters who also lived in London were outside Buckingham Palace on VE Day to hear the King.

With the Catford school bombing (not v far from me) as others have said, the pilot absolutely knew it was a school: he flew low over a playground full of children. The same raid saw children at other schools machine-gunned. Reporting the building destroyed as a block of flats gave him plausible deniability - massively unlikely they actually had permission to step things up like that. Bit of indiscriminate strafing civilians is one thing, but destroying a school full of children is another, because it makes their schools fair game. Given immediacy of reports from multiple sources who’d not time to confer it’s massively unlikely that “pilot flew low & must have known” is a collective memory issue. The “public building” explanation makes even less sense when you consider they were (for a plane) practically on top of Lewisham Town Hall & they’d also Catford Bus Garage so close, plus the station - or even Lewisham Hospital... Basically, there were plenty of far better targets in very easy reach to fulfil usual aims of a (WWII) bombing raid, but they went the Mass Slaughter Of Children route instead.

@lozengeoflove I keep remembering them so I'm glad you enjoy them.

My mum's dad was in a 'reserved occupation' and my mum was jealous of the kids who had dads 'at war' and got gifts sent.

She used to tell a story of being outside playing, my grandmother heard her chatting to someone and came outside and found her making mud pies with a German POW who was working as a bin man.

She always said it was in the war but I have a feeling it was probably afterwards when POWs were kept for reparation work.

This is such a moving thread. I’ve only recently read Kate Atkinson’s Life after Life which gives a fictionalised account of life in wartime London, and harrowing accounts of bombing scenes. But there’s always a distance in fiction even when it’s based on real events.
These snippets are so much more painful to read.

A couple more stories from my dad's side of the family.

My dad was 2 when his father was called up. After basic training he was due to set sail from Liverpool so my dad and his mother went to see him off, I'm not sure but I think my grandad had leave so they went as a family. They arrived in Liverpool the day before and tried to get a B and B or a guest house but they were full, so they tried more expensive options finally arriving at the steps to the Adelphi which they certainly could not afford.

I'm not clear on the exact happening, maybe they were discussing the price but a chef arrived for his work and overheard and told them he would be working all night so his bed was empty and to go to his mum's address, say he had sent them and she would put them up for the night.

So thank you to that chef and his mother for looking after my grandparents.

While my grandad was in Egypt he bought some metal planes to send home to my dad. Sending metal was illegal so when my my grandad got to the officer's tent he was scared. He found the officers playing dogfights with the planes. Some of the planes had been damaged so he was ordered to a) get them repaired and b) pack them better next time.

My Nana had collected chocolate when the war started (which was probably illegal) and hidden it in a shoe box so my dad could have a bar of chocolate on his birthdays or at Xmas. My dad found the box and played 'shopkeeper' and handed them out to the neighbour's kids.

The neighbours, understandably, did not give them back.

Although the neighbour did, later, give my Nana a handful of dried fruit, sugar, flour to make a cake that she (illegally) sent to my grandad labeled 'soap'.

My grandparents were the most honest people you could meet, and thinking about it breaking the law was so out of character I wonder how many other upstanding members of the community were also breaking laws.

This is the most fascinating and most moving thread I've ever read on Mumsnet (and I've been around here for 18 years!).

The multitude of real-life stories gives such color to a time that we tend to see fictionalised.

My mum was born in 1928 and lived in Deptford. The stories she can tell make your hair curl. Some hilariously funny, some devastatingly awful.
Her best friend was killed in an air raid she was found under the table with her arms round her 3 little brothers all dead. I’m named after her.

I do hope so @coldwarenigma. It deserves not to disappear

Boom Awam I did yesterday too so hopefully this thread will be preserved!

Both my parents are old Eastenders, so both sets of my grandparents lived through "the blitz" and told many tales, some with great humour attached, others with horrifically sad endings. I'd say the "general wartime spirit" never left them, they were all infectious characters with a zest for life and an ever resourceful set of methods .
My maternal grandfather worked in the docks (now Docklands) and my grandmother worked in a starch factory (was bombed flat) and a cigarette factory where she was reportedly the fastest on the line, being rewarded in a bonus carton each week which was split amongst family members. They all smoked heavily but lasted until their mid 80's.
My paternal grandfather worked for the BT exchange and served in many meat battles, travelled extensively and had fascinating stories from his time in Egypt.
My godmother was sent as a young girl to live in the countryside for reasons of safety but was abused by the man of the house she was sent to. She told nobody until her own mother passed away for fear of upset, which I even today find heartbreaking. She never married and I often onset of perhaps this childhood experience was why...
Just incredible times and incredible sacrifices each and every family made, with so much sadness and loss. And yet in a strange way, it "made them" the fierce and industrious folks they remained until death. I miss all of them hugely.

@lozengeoflove

There is a deaf history society, unfortunately their museum is closed at the moment.

www.bdhs.org.uk/

My grandmother grew up in Camden during the blitz. She told me she didn't know what ice cream was until she was 14 🤯

This is, without doubt the most interesting post I've read on MN. I hope you don't mind but I have nominated it for classics
If anyone is interested there is a book called No time to wave goodbye, which is written by children who were evacuated all around the world. It's both heartwarming and heartbreaking in equal messures
I'm also reading The Bletchley Girls by Tessa Dunlop, it's hard to really comprehend what people were up against until you hear it in their own words

Not in London but may help with the general feeling of the war.

My grandmother was the youngest of five girls but had married and moved out at the start of WWII.

They were in a northern mill town.

Evacuees arrived at the station and people went to 'pick' the ones they wanted (can you imagine that now?).

My great grandmother's next door neighbour came to see her, she'd gone to get some refugees but the problem was the boys she had room for had an older sister with them who'd been given 2 rules - you must all be together and you must go to an RC family.

So after some discussion the older sister took over my grandmother's bed but went next door to where her brothers were every day for meals, to get them to school etc etc.

My great aunt was still writing to her when they were both in their 60s.

I think education was disrupted for most people, where schools had refugees they often did half days, so the local kids had school in the morning and the refugee kids in the afternoon.

Directly after the war there was a shortage of teachers and ex-service men where recruited who may or may not have the skills to teach.

Oh and some anecdotes from some older deaf people who I've had the privilege to talk to.

One was walking home when he was grabbed and shouted at, he was unaware of the air raid siren and the fact there were bombs dropping.

Earlier he'd had call up papers and passed the medical until someone asked the Dr if he had checked his hearing.

Deaf people during air raids, as mentioned above, couldn't hear the sirens so air raid wardens often had keys to deaf people's houses and would let themselves in to wake up the occupants at night.

Other deaf people would tie a string to their bed (or occasionally a toe) and hang the rope outside for the warden to tug on.

My dgf never talked about the war either. I know he was in Europe after d-day and had a french girlfriend - I think her mum or gran always used to accompany them on their dates as a chaperone! But he never really said anything. Grandma used to remember being in the Anderson shelter - she is terrified of frogs and says there were always frogs in there as it was so damp. They lived in a little village but they’re east of Coventry so had to watch out as I believe bombers on their way back from raiding there would drop any bombs they had left on anything they could find.

DHs grandfather fought in Africa, the other one had a parachute accident when his parachute only partially opened. He broke his back, but amazingly recovered and was able to walk again.

MiLs family were from London and were relocated after the war to Haverhill - DH was born in Suffolk. We might never have met if that hadn’t happened.

My DGM was in her 40's during the war.

She hated Remembrance Day with a passion; why would anyone want to remember it when it was all unremittingly awful?

She took in evacuees, a brother and sister, from East London (they were in Surrey) and they stayed close all their lives. He died recently at the age of 86 and asked to be buried in the same cemetery as my grandparents, they'd made such an emotional impact on them.

My DGF was in the Heavy Rescue Service. He worked for the local council, being too old for active service.

www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/77/a3198477.shtml

Members of the same family had very different experiences. One of my dad's sisters did some war work in London (moving from Scotland) where she met her husband who became a wing commander and they lived in a mews house in Mayfair quite safely. And after had a farm in a prosperous county. My dad was already in the RAF as a mechanic and was fortunate to be posted to the Middle East as ground crew for most of the war. I found his photographs of the pyramids, the deserts and Jerusalem fascinating. He also served in South Africa and Italy before coming back to the UK.

My mum's family should in theory have been safer at home in the north of England. My grandfather was a retired police sergeant but went back to serve as a volunteer policeman. He was killed cycling home in the blackout. Their younger daughter had an accident at home and went to hospital where she died of pneumonia. Their only son was in Bomber Command and was lost with all the crew somwhere over Germany. They were never found, he was 21.

My mum was in the WAAF as a cook which is how she met my dad when he was posted back to England. We used her ration cookery book until the 70s. So my grandmother started the war with a husband and 3 young adult children and ended with one daughter. I never met her. My parents had a big family but my mum died young also.

My gran and her family lived in East London during WW2, she was born in 1930. She was evacuated four times and her evacuation stories were sad but very funny too. She said the villagers in the places she was evacuated to generally didn’t like the ‘outsider‘ children and were not that nice to them.

My gran’s mother was not a very nice person and eventually got my gran to come back and work in London when she was 14. She was working in a factory making clothes right at the end of the War when a V2 rocket hit the building opposite (where Danish airman were billeted). My gran said everything went black and when she came around a girl opposite looked at her and started screaming. It turned out that glass and other debris from the blast had injured her face and severed her optic nerve and my gran eventually had to have her eye removed. She was shoved in the back of a van containing dead Danish airman before being rushed to hospital. A few weeks later when everyone was out celebrating VE Day she was recuperating from the operation in hospital.

My gran recovered and despite her disrupted schooling she went on to get a first class history degree in her fifties, she was an amazing woman and very good looking, glass eye and all. She married twice and had a very happy second marriage, learnt to drive when women of her age rarely drove and was a genuine inspiration to me. She never quite forgave the Germans though despite being very liberal and non-xenophobic in general! She also never forgave the Americans for taking in many of the German scientists who helped produce the V2 rockets after the War when they were looking to get ahead in the nuclear arms race.

Fascinating thread - any more for any more?

My Nan was born in 1925 & lived in Surrey Docks (if you watch the Blitz Spirit documentary you’ll see it being bombed) she married my grandad towards the end of the war when he was on 2 day leave.
My Great Grandad was an ostler (looked after horses) and a reserve fireman, towards the end of the war my Nan & great aunt worked in a munitions factory.
Life was hard, they lived in a rough & poor part of London.
Right up until she died my Nan would never throw anything away unless it was really on its last legs & no food waste ever!
My nan had a sister (Ester) who died a few years before my Nan.
At Ester’s funeral there was a man that didn’t seem to belong to anyone - my Nan told us it was Ester’s brother.
My mum & I were confused - how could it be Esters’s brother but not my Nan’s brother?
Turns out Ester’s dad had been killed while away fighting & her mum had also died.
Ester lived a couple of houses along from my Nan’s family & they just took her in. We never knew that she wasn’t my Nan’s real sister, they’d been sisters for over 50 years.